The Great Blurb Scandal

The le Carré Cast - A podcast on John le Carré novels

This episode the le Carré Cast delves into the world of true crime with a look at one of the strangest moments in le Carré’s literary history.

You won’t read about this one in Sisman’s biography!

Settle in for the case of the fake blurbs.

Further Reading

Sources used to write this post are below. Both The New York Times and The Washington Post had some great reporting on the story with “The Bizarre story of Derek Goodwin” being especially well done.

“A Spy Novel’s boosters it seems, aren’t” 04/13/1991, The New York Times

“Book Notes” 09/25/1991, The New York Times

“Manuscript with False Praise is Rejected” 04/26/1991, The New York Times

“The Bizarre story of Derek Goodwin” 04/08/1991, The Washington Post

“What’s up with the book biz” 04/23/1991, The Washington Post

Thanks to Matthew Kresal for finding this 06/02/2013 interview, “The killer serial killer who scared the FBI”, with the Derek Goodwin in the French magazine, L’Express. All quotes from that story are with the caveat that they were run through Google Translate.

Val Mcdermid’s message board posts circa 2003-2008 had some interesting discussions on the book.

Clive Cussler by Stuart Leuthner had more on Cussler’s take on the incident.

Jeff’s site – SpyWrite.com

Jeff’s twitter – @spywrite

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